RUSH: This is Sarah Palin and her accomplishments. Obama cannot make a speech like this.
PALIN: In serving as the team mom and coaching some basketball on the side, I got involved in the PTA and then was elected to the city council and then elected mayor of my hometown where my agenda was to stop wasteful spending and cut property taxes and put the people first! (cheers and applause) I was then appointed ethics commissioner and chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. And when I found corruption there, I fought it hard and I held the offenders to account. (cheers and applause) Along with fellow reformers in the great state of Alaska, as governor, I stood up to the old politics as usual — to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies, and the good old boy network. (cheers and applause) When oil and gas prices went up so dramatically and the state revenues followed with that increase, I sent a large share of that revenue directly back to the people of Alaska — and we are now… (cheers and applause) We’re now embarking on a $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.
RUSH: She’s doing it.
PALIN: I signed major ethics reforms and I appointed both Democrats and independents to serve in my administration, and I championed reform, toned the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ on that Bridge to Nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said we’d build it ourselves.
RUSH: Sarah Palin: babies, guns, Jesus. Hot damn!
Back to the phones. Chuck in Oswego, New York. You’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. It’s Open Line Friday, great to have you here.
CALLER: Rush, it’s great to be here. Can I paraphrase Michelle Obama real quick?
RUSH: Sure.
CALLER: ‘For the first time in years, I am proud to be a Republican.’
RUSH: (laughter) Very funny. That’s cool.
CALLER: I love it, man. Thank you, because you are in a great sense responsible for her being there, because you paved the way for conservatism to become mainstream in this country, not just you but the other people that are on the radio, the websites, everything. You are partly responsible for this, and God bless you for it.
RUSH: Chuck, thank you very much. It makes me so happy you say that. Thanks very much.
CALLER: I’m so excited about this, I’ll tell you. I saw a couple weeks ago, I was so worried — you know, because my nickname for John McCain is the Warm Beer Candidate, and I was so worried — that he was going to go with, you know, a Tom Ridge or Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney was my governor.
RUSH: Let me tell you what was going on with that. There are a lot of different factions in the McCain camp. He made this decision himself, but there are a lot of factions in that camp. He surrounds himself with people like Lindsey Grahamnesty, and Grahamnesty was the one pushing Lieberman. Grahamnesty thought that would be the bold pick, or Ridge. The McCain camp does not have any full-fledged right-wingers in it. There are people that are more conservative than they are a moderate, but really right-wingers, there aren’t any there. So whatever the message was that I told McCain, if he really heard it — if he wanted clear sailing and he wasn’t worried about any reaction — he wanted Lieberman, that’s what was put out.
Now, I don’t know if that’s the Lindsey Graham faction putting that out, ’cause all these people were leaking these different names in an attempt to put pressure McCain to pick them, to run trial balloons on them or what have you. But the bottom line is when it came right down to it, after Biden was chosen, you just knew — and especially if you tracked the McCain campaign the last six, seven weeks. They’ve done a 180 and they’re focusing on the base; they’re focusing more on conservatism than they have. You’ve seen the poll numbers rise. It just didn’t make any sense, especially after the Saddleback Forum, to put somebody pro-choice on the ticket. I don’t think it was ever something that was really that close to happening. I really don’t. It might have been close in the minds of some of McCain’s camp, and I think it’s probably true that if he could have, he would have, but he’s not that stupid.
He’s just not that stupid. Regardless the process, regardless how it came out, it’s just a great choice here. An absolutely fabulous decision was made here — and they kept it secret. They brilliantly executed the whole ceremony today, the whole appearance, knocking coverage of Obama’s messianic descent from the heavens last night in Denver. They just obliterated it. Obama is nowhere. He and Biden are opening their campaign in Beaver, Pennsylvania, on the day that McCain named Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate. Besides that, I don’t know if you people were here in the first hour, but we decided to JIP McCain’s announcement ceremony today, ’cause it was historic. Talk about historic? We got history, too, on our side!
You get worried when you start JIPing things like this, joining in progress things like this because there are commercial breaks. This is a business. And it’s not just our commercial breaks, the local affiliates. In dire straits emergencies, you can blow them out but you have to make ’em good at some point, and that becomes an organizational problem and a logistics problem. So we were keeping our fingers crossed today that we could cover and JIP the McCain-Sarah Palin announcement ceremony and still hit our spot breaks — and damned if it didn’t work! McCain hit the spot break at the bottom of the first hour perfectly. He didn’t start the ceremony ’til after our first spot break in the first hour, and he got the announcement done in the second segment, and then Sarah Palin hit the spot break in the second half hour. They kept to the format. They hit the format like professionals — like the professionals I know that they are.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mary in Las Vegas, you’re next on the EIB Network. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. What a perfect ending to the Democrats’ convention. I am so excited about this woman. I jotted some things down as I listened to her speech. She’s smart, she spoke from her heart, she’s compassionate —
RUSH: Authentic.
CALLER: — she’s attractive, not in a superficial Hollywood way, she’s just an attractive woman, she’s experienced, she’s tough, she’s comfortable in front of the audience, she was very easy to listen to. I am just like, I think McCain hit it out of the park with this, and I’m just so excited about it.
RUSH: A lot of people are, and I think it’s justified. I agree with you. It’s a great pick. She’s not shrill.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: She’s not going to remind anybody of their ex-wife, she’s going to remind men, ‘Gee, I wish she was single.’
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: It’s good. It’s good all the way around. I’m glad you called, thanks, Mary, very much.
Homer, Alaska. This is Martin. Martin, great to have on the program.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing today?
RUSH: Fine, sir, great, sir.
CALLER: I’m absolutely excited to be on the phone with you. We are all so excited about Governor Palin being picked. We are ecstatic. I got goose bumps.
RUSH: Yeah, so do the Democrats, but not the way you do. I wonder if Chris Matthews has a tingle going up his leg as he listens —
CALLER: He just might! Just might.
RUSH: — to Sarah Palin.
CALLER: She’s done so many great things here, Rush, so many great things.
RUSH: Well, I know. Which one are you speaking of?
CALLER: Well, just recently, she passed a thing where you know how we get our dividends here every year?
RUSH: Yeah. Yes, we know that.
CALLER: She added a $1,200 energy bonus on there —
RUSH: Cause of the gas prices.
CALLER: Oh, yeah, and our gas prices are way higher than anywhere down in the lower 48.
RUSH: What are you paying up there in Homer?
CALLER: $4.76 a gallon.
RUSH: Has it come down any in the last month or so?
CALLER: It came down about ten cents.
RUSH: You can find it for $3.50 in certain parts of the United States.
CALLER: Oh, yeah. And there are so many people here that heat their homes with propane, that’s the big one right now because you’re looking at for, you know, a hundred gallon, you’re looking at $400, almost $500 dollars for a hundred gallons, and most people are using close to a thousand gallons of propane a year.
RUSH: Well, she mentioned this. She didn’t mention numbers, but she mentioned this bonus program in her remarks with Senator McCain. It’s great to hear from you, Martin. Thank you very much.